Comments Off on Solar-powered aquaponic greenhouses grow up to 880 lbs of produce each year

Fresh produce – ideally grown locally right in your backyard – is essential to a healthy diet, but with scores of people either lacking the space, time, or knowledge to cultivate their own food , for many that ideal simply isn’t attainable. Enter French company Myfood . They aim to bring food production back home, and they’re doing it with smart solar aquaponic greenhouses . These groundbreaking greenhouses, which are small enough to fit in a yard or even a city balcony, can produce 660 to 880 pounds of vegetables every year. Myfood is pursuing the vision that everyone should be able to grow their own produce locally. To that end, they’ve come up with small family greenhouses powered by the sun that can function off-grid . Their Family22 greenhouse is 22 square meters, or around 237 square feet, and comes complete with solar panels and a rainwater collection system. Their model City offers a smaller option for those residing in busy metropolises – it’s just 38 square feet. Both models can be installed above ground, making them suitable for backyards or rooftops. Related: The Sunbubble greenhouse is a mini Eden for your backyard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi728-dgViU Inside the greenhouse, fish swimming around the base of vertical towers fertilize the vegetables growing – no synthetic fertilizers or pesticides needed. Inspired by permaculture , the team also developed raised beds that can surround the greenhouse for added food production. Ultimately, after several months, the beds become self-fertile. The greenhouses are intended for everyone from seasoned gardeners to people with zero gardening experience. Often one barrier that stands in the way of home food production is a lack of knowledge, so Myfood makes it easy for anyone to get started growing their own food through their smart structures designed to control the climate to guarantee success, according to Myfood. The team’s app enables families to remotely monitor the greenhouse. Myfood co-founder Mickaël Gandecki said, “The production of fresh and natural food, close to the consumer, offers a response to the environmental impact and lack of transparency of intensive, industrial agriculture .” Myfood recently unveiled what they described as the first European line of smart aquaponic greenhouses at the Paris International Agricultural Show 2017 during February 25 through March 5. In France and Benelux, a City model costs around $4,820 and the Family22 around $8,577. Those figures include installation, delivery, and tax. Outside the European Union costs are slightly different; not including installation, delivery or tax, the City is around $3,569 and the Family22 is around $6,432. You can find out more on their website here . + Myfood Images courtesy of Myfood

Comments Off on How high-tech Kasita microhomes could revolutionize homeownership

America’s affordable housing crisis is squeezing people out of cities, but one Harvard researcher believes he’s developed a beautiful and high-tech solution to the problem. In 2015, Jeff Wilson—also known as “Professor Dumpster” after his year-long dumpster living experiment—unveiled Kasita , a smart microhousing startup that aims at disrupting the housing market with prefabricated tiny homes that can pop up just about anywhere. After a couple years in development, Wilson just debuted the Kasita microhouse at SXSW this week with the announcement that the tiny stackable homes will be ready for nationwide delivery in June. Stylish, smart, and space-saving, the 352-square-foot (33 square meter) Kasita mobile home offers a beautiful split-level living space that uses transforming furniture , white walls, and ten-foot-high ceilings to make its small footprint feel airy and spacious. Most impressively, the home is outfitted with ultra-modern amenities and home automation such as the dynamic curtain-less windows that can be turned opaque with a smartphone app to the Amazon Alexa-powered lighting modes. The high-tech stackable homes can be moved around with a crane, placed virtually anywhere, and can be prefabricated in as little as three weeks. https://vimeo.com/207700762 Envisioned for installation in unused areas of land like vacant parking lots, the Kasita aims to keep land lease costs low by taking advantage of undevelopable real estate in prime urban areas. The flexibility and modularity of the Kasitas lend themselves for use as apartments, multi-family homes, student housing, workforce housing, and more. Related: Meet the Texas Professor Who Lives in a Dumpster The Kasita comes fully equipped with all the traditional home amenities—including a walk-in shower, fridge, convection oven, washer/dryer, cooktop, and queen-sized bed—as well as lots of space-saving storage and access to natural light. Each unit costs $139,000, which according to Wilson’s calculations comes out to an estimated $800 monthly mortgage not including land lease costs. Interested customers can pay $1,000 to hold a spot on the waitlist for preorders. + Kasita

Got an itchy green thumb for an organic garden but not the space to support it? Introducing the Vertocology Hanging Garden , a vertical structure created by Eugene-based Mark Scott Lavin that’s perfect for urban dwellers. Inspired by the designs of Buckminster Fuller , the Vertecology Hanging Garden was created with a stable geometric form that makes the structure strong, wind-resistant, and easy-to-build. While the space-saving garden system is already available for purchase , supporting the Kickstarter would help fund improvements in the design, such as making the Vertecology Hanging Garden flat-packable and into a self-contained ecosystem able to support soil, aquaponic, and hydroponic growing. + Vertecology Hanging Garden Kickstarter The article above was submitted to us by an Inhabitat reader. Want to see your story on Inhabitat ? Send us a tip by following this link . Remember to follow our instructions carefully to boost your chances of being chosen for publishing! Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg Post tags: aquaponic , Buckminster Fuller , hanging garden , hydroponic , kickstarter , mark scott lavin , reader submitted content , urban gardeners , Vertecology , vertecology hanging garden

Comments Off on DIY: Everything You Need to Know to Build a Simple Backyard Aquaponics System

Aquaponics = aquaculture (the raising of edible fish) + hydroponics (growing vegetables and herbs without soil). You may have seen examples of this revolutionary way of growing food in some of the projects featured on Inhabitat . Per square foot, it’s the most productive form of agriculture on the planet, and is a perfect example of a living machine: a self-sufficient assembly of plants and animals that functions like an ecosystem , producing food for people without creating waste products or pollution. Read the rest of DIY: Everything You Need to Know to Build a Simple Backyard Aquaponics System Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg Post tags: aquaponic , aquaponics , aquaponics system , backyard aquaponics , backyard gardening , closed loop system , eco design , fish tank garden , home food production , hydroponics , lettuces , living machine , organic food , self-sustaining , sustainable fish , sustainable food , tilapia , vertical gardening , water garden

If you like the idea of aquaponics but aren’t sure how to get started, you’re in luck: AquaSprouts just launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund their brilliant home system, which allows anyone to grow vegetables right on the kitchen counter. Imagine having lettuce and other summery greens growing right in your kitchen in the middle of winter, or a wide selection of fresh herbs at your fingertips for all your culinary needs. Sure, you could keep a few potted plants here and there and hope that you’ll remember to water them regularly, or you could get on board with sustainable growing techniques for a far more efficient way to garden indoors. Read the rest of AquaSprouts’s Stylish Aquaponic Garden Lets You Grow Fresh Veggies on Your Kitchen Counter Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg Post tags: aquaponic , aquaponic gardening , aquaponics , AquaSprouts , fish , fish tank , fish tank garden , Gardening , herbs , indoor food , indoor gardening , kickstarter , lettuce , Urban Farming , urban gardening , water garden